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Press Release

PIANISTS ALAN GAMPEL AND JOAN TOWER PRESENT LECTURE/RECITAL AT BARD COLLEGE
Featuring works by Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Tower

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Internationally renowned pianists Alan Gampel and Joan Tower will present a lecture/recital at Bard College on Wednesday, April 26, at 8:00 p.m. The event, presented by The Bard Center, will be held in Olin Hall and is free and open to the public.

"Since last year these programs have included members of the Bard faculty, notably cellist Robert Martin, dean of graduate studies and associate dean of the College," notes Alan Gampel. "This lecture/recital will focus on the world-renowned composer Joan Tower, chair of Bard's Music Program." He continues, "Together Joan and I will examine works of Ravel, Debussy, and Stravinsky, some of the composers who have influenced and contributed to her work." Gampel has been performing lecture/recitals at Bard College over the past four years.

Alan Gampel and Joan Tower will perform Ravel's Ma mère l'Oie and Tower's Stepping Stones, both for two pianos. Gampel will perform Debussy's Images, Book 2and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, both for solo piano.

Hailed as "a gifted pianist with a debonair command of the idiom," by the Chicago Times, Alan Gampel, is an international performer whose latest engagements have included the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Irish National Symphony, and Czech Chamber Orchestra. Born into an artistic family that includes the legendary harpsichordist Wanda Landowski, Gampel made his debut at age seven at the Hollywood Bowl playing Beethoven variations. In 1999, in celebration of Chopin's 150th anniversary, Gampel gave an extensive international recital tour, which included a performance at Bard. As part of the tour he performed numerous children's concerts at public schools. His passion for introducing classical music to young people has made these appearances a staple of his regular concert tours. In recent years he has appeared in recital at London's Wigmore Hall, in Paris at the Théâtre du Chatelet, Theatre des Champs-Elysées, Auditorium du Louvre, and Musée d'Orsay, in Rome at the Teatro Ghione, and in the United States at the Kennedy Center, Chicago's Ravinia Festival, and New York's Frick Collection Series and Mostly Mozart Festival.

Award-winning pianist, composer and conductor Joan Tower, one of the most highly regarded composers in the United States today, is Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College. Her recent works include the world premiere in February of The Last Dance by the Orchestra of St. Lukes at Carnegie Hall. In 1998, the year of her sixtieth birthday, more than twenty concerts were presented in her honor throughout the country. A recipient of the Delaware Symphony’s Alfred I. Dupont Award for Distinguished American Composers and an inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and in 1990 was the recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Tower, whose orchestral works have been commissioned and performed around the world, is currently composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City. She was active as founder and pianist of the 1973 Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players. She was composer-in-residence with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and is currently co-artistic director of the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and composer-in-residence at the Summit Institute for the Arts in Utah. This summer, she is also a featured composer at the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival. Her most recent recording is Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman (Koch International Classics), with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop, conductor.

The concert is made possible, in part, through the generosity of the Homeland Foundation and the Leon Levy Foundation at Bard College. For further information, call The Bard Center at 914-758-7425.